Newfoundland closes schools as island enters fourth day of blackouts

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. (CP) — Thousands of people in Newfoundland continue to be without power as the island enters its fourth day of rolling blackouts to conserve energy and crews work to restore electricity.

All schools throughout the island, including Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic, have been shut down until Wednesday as a result of the power shortages.

Michele Coughlan, a spokeswoman with Newfoundland Power, said about 30,000 customers were without electricity as of 8:30 a.m. local time Monday after a power plant went offline in the latest energy problem to hit the province in recent days.

Despite widespread blackouts in subzero temperatures, Premier Kathy Dunderdale reiterated that the situation did not amount to a crisis.

“It’s a hardship to some people, but you know, our roads are open, people can move about the province,” Dunderdale told VOCM Radio in St. John’s.

“Yes, people are a little cold, they can’t cook in their homes. We’re making sure there are warming centres for people who don’t have backup power in their homes.”

Hospitals, police and government services were still operating, she added.

Newfoundland was struggling with power shortages when there was a flash in the switch yard at a power plant in Holyrood, N.L., on Sunday evening, causing further outages. There was no issue with the plant or the generating units and no one was injured, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro said.

Crews were trying to determine what caused the problem at the plant, located about 50 kilometres southwest of St. John’s.

On Saturday, a fire broke out at the Sunnyside terminal station after a transformer malfunction, triggering more power interruptions. The malfunction, the cause of which is not yet known, came after rotating blackouts were implemented Thursday as utilities struggled with increased demand because of cold temperatures.

At the peak of the outages Saturday morning, about 190,000 customers were without power.

Dunderdale defended the province’s energy system, saying no system in the world is 100 per cent reliable.

“Yes, somebody could make the argument that you could build in a super amount of redundancy, but then we have to pay for that,” she said.

She likened it to a homeowner having spare appliances like fridges and stoves stored in their garage just in case.

“Is that practical? Is that sensible?” she said. “Do you put that amount of cost on the ratepayer?”